#86
He was looking at Seo Yi-young with furrowed brows.
“You’re crazy.”
His voice sounded exasperated. However, he looked Seo Yi-young up and down as if checking whether he was injured anywhere. It seemed even Choi Do-jun couldn’t avoid the aging phenomenon, as the wrinkles on his face had increased, but his sharp gaze remained the same. Seo Yi-young immediately applied healing to Choi Do-jun. The wrinkles gradually disappeared from his face.
Choi Do-jun must have clearly felt the change in his body. After examining Choi Do-jun’s body to see if there was anything wrong, and confirming he was fine, Seo Yi-young said a word.
“We’re alive, so it’s fine.”
“…You.”
“It’s good. I was wondering how to heal the other team members. Just a moment.”
As they were floating in the air, there was less interference from mobs than when they were on the ground, making visibility better. Seo Yi-young sent healing toward the hunters as far as he could see. Hunters who had been struggling with aging and poisoning began to return to their normal state.
Seo Yi-young checked the back of his hand once. He could see wrinkles slowly forming again on the back of his hand. He hadn’t completely stopped the aging. The aging would progress again. The same was true for the poisoning. Not unless that green mist was completely eliminated.
After healing Choi Do-jun once more, Seo Yi-young said.
“Now put me down. I’m done.”
Choi Do-jun frowned but didn’t say anything. Seo Yi-young thought he might throw him back into the protective barrier, but surprisingly, he gently put him down beside him.
“If I put you in the protective barrier, you’d just run out anyway.”
Seo Yi-young shrugged his shoulders. So rather than doing that, he’d keep him by his side. It was as good as saying he was confident in keeping Seo Yi-young from getting hurt. That confidence wasn’t unfounded. Mobs couldn’t approach around Seo Yi-young as if some kind of barrier had been placed. Even the acidic bodily fluids that sprayed from cut mobs couldn’t reach him. They burned up in the air before reaching Seo Yi-young. It almost felt like he was covered with some invisible barrier.
Barrier?
Seo Yi-young blinked. It felt like a light bulb had suddenly turned on in his head.
What if, instead of just applying healing to the body, he could create a barrier that would block attacks from the beginning? Seo Yi-young’s eyes began to quickly assess the surrounding situation.
Rather than just throwing healing like a ball, it needed to stop outside the person’s body. He needed to adjust the amount of healing enough to maintain the barrier. It was a usage method he had never tried before, so he didn’t know if he could do it well, but it was worth a try.
Without hesitation, Seo Yi-young used his ability on Choi Do-jun who was beside him. When he sent healing to Choi Do-jun, at first it seemed like a barrier was being created over his body, but soon it went inside his body as usual. It was possible in imagination, but he didn’t yet know how to do it intuitively.
But who gets full on the first spoonful? Seo Yi-young tried again. When he thought about spreading the healing thinly just before it touched the body, a transparent barrier spread over the skin. Seeing his thoughts accurately implemented, Seo Yi-young unknowingly clenched his fist. He applied the healing barrier to himself in the same way he had just done to Choi Do-jun. The aging that had briefly appeared disappeared. The poisoning symptoms as well. Seo Yi-young’s prediction had been spot on.
Choi Do-jun seemed to have noticed how Seo Yi-young was utilizing his ability. He could feel his glance. Though he wasn’t a child, Seo Yi-young’s shoulders rose with pride.
“Now it seems you’re doing your fair share.”
“I’ve been doing that all along.”
This guy, really. Would it hurt to say something nice for once?
Still, this level of praise was probably considerable by Choi Do-jun’s standards.
Now what remained was to apply this to the other hunters. As long as the healing barrier was applied, at least the fear of status ailments could be eliminated.
Seo Yi-young immediately put it into action. Hunters who received the healing barrier burst into admiration and attacked the mobs. Watching them, he discovered a new fact about the healing barrier: it also blocked a certain level of injury. If he could use this in multiple layers, he could prevent injuries themselves preemptively.
As Seo Yi-young was applying several layers of healing barriers to the hunters, someone’s shout was heard from below.
“Kill it quickly!”
It was a valid point. Due to the hardness that increased with each regeneration, dealing with the mob would undoubtedly become more difficult as time passed.
“Ah, shit, how do we stop the regeneration…!”
“Augh, it’s still the same no matter how much we cut it!”
When desperate words burst out from here and there, Mikhail, who used wind, seemed to attack, but what his wind cut was none other than the ground. The sand was deeply dug for a moment and then quickly returned to its original state. When criticisms of what he was doing came out, Mikhail shouted loudly.
“The floor! The main body is inside!”
Several hunters exclaimed at Mikhail’s shout. As he pointed out, the black pillars weren’t individual entities but had a separate main body. In an ordinary dungeon, everyone would have noticed, but in the environment of a disaster-class dungeon, with aging and poisoning coming at them, they couldn’t think calmly.
But thanks to Mikhail’s keen eye, they had an opportunity to exterminate the mob.
“Then I’ll leave it to you.”
Choi Do-jun left those words and departed from Seo Yi-young’s side. Watching Choi Do-jun fly up into the sky, Seo Yi-young belatedly swallowed his complaint about how he should specify what exactly he was leaving to whom. But more than that, the fact that Choi Do-jun had said such a thing to him gave him a rather peculiar feeling.
They could dig up the sand, but the moment it was exposed was too fleeting, and the dug sand flew at other hunters, making it difficult to try again. It was too hard to just wait for the timing.
On normal ground, they could split the earth with an impact, but because it was sand, even that was difficult. Choi Do-jun’s voice came through the communication equipment.
“Han Nam-tae. Make all team members lighter by adjusting their weight, and Mikhail, create an updraft.”
“All team members? Uh, yes!”
Han Nam-tae, a support hunter, had the ability to adjust weight. The two seemed bewildered by Choi Do-jun’s instructions but soon used their abilities. The hunters floated up into the air like feathers. Choi Do-jun used his ability without missing the moment.
Having risen quite high, Seo Yi-young thought this might be unnecessary, but a moment later, seeing Choi Do-jun’s ability, he had to admit his thought was wrong.
Choi Do-jun poured an enormous amount of light onto the wide area where the mob was. It wasn’t just bright; it was so hot that even Seo Yi-young, who was floating high up, could feel the heat. The mob writhed at Choi Do-jun’s ability and swung its tentacles toward him, but he dodged with ease, as if finding it laughable.
Seo Yi-young wondered what he was trying to do, but as time went on, the heat emanating from him became alarming.
“Higher, raise us higher!”
Someone urgently shouted. The heat Choi Do-jun created was so strong that even hunters at a mere height of 10m were in danger. As Mikhail used his ability, the hunters quickly rode the updraft to rise higher.
The desert sand could be seen hardening into an opaque glass-like substance. The hot heat rising from the ground was transmitted even to the hunters floating nearly at the height of a 60-story building.
“Hey, that…”
“Isn’t the sand hardening?”
“Crazy… For sand to turn into glass, it needs to be at least 1,800 degrees…”
The hunters’ low murmurs flowed through the communication equipment. Seo Yi-young’s mouth, who was listening, opened slightly before he clicked his tongue lightly. Yes, this was truly insane. Could this be the ability Choi Do-jun had been hiding? At this point, even the “light” ability of Choi Do-jun might be an understatement. Honestly, he could have said anything. It’s not like others could verify it anyway.
Though they had cooled it down, heat was still seeping out red-hot from various spots on the ground, making him worry if it was okay to stand like this. At this level, the main body of the mob inside might have already been cooked.
What mob could survive near 2,000 degrees of heat?
“…Should have used it from the start.”
Seo Yi-young grumbled a small complaint inwardly.
When Choi Do-jun stopped his ability, one hunter cooled the surface.
The hunters who had been floating in the air descended onto the hardened ground. The poison mist had also disappeared, probably burned away by the heat. Though they said they had cooled the surface, it wasn’t completely cooled, as a warm heat could still be felt. It was hard to believe that this had been a desert until now.
The hunters who checked the mob’s condition let out low exclamations of disbelief. As Seo Yi-young had guessed, it was burned black beyond recognition. The mob that had been so difficult to deal with was now blackened, with parts crumbling into ash and blowing away.
Tap.
Startled by the presence of something landing right behind him, Seo Yi-young’s shoulders jerked. When he turned his head to check, it was Choi Do-jun.
“If you could defeat it this easily, why didn’t you use it from the start, …Choi Do-jun?”
Seo Yi-young widened his eyes in surprise as he looked at Choi Do-jun.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
